


La Mia Rosa Spagnola, con la Pelle Così Dolce

by Ricky B (littletoes101)



Category: Baccano!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:48:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1860321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littletoes101/pseuds/Ricky%20B
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[<i>My Spanish Rose, with Skin So Sweet</i>]<br/>Dallas Genoard was born an Omega, but he’ll be damned if he stays that way. His mother left him an order and he vows to fulfill it, no matter the cost. Luck Gandor was born an Alpha, and it oozes out of every part of him. Every part, that is, except the part of his brain that takes over when Eve Genoard pleads with him to help her brother. He supposes he has to, since he’s put them in this situation after all. He doesn’t expect for Dallas to be as truly broken, messily rewired, and determined as he is. He doesn’t expect that he might feel sympathy for Dallas. He doesn’t expect that he’d spend his nights with his fingers brushing Dallas’s knuckles, murmuring “<i>mia rosa spagnola</i>” in a tone that is more than friendly. [AU, A/B/O dynamics. The events of 1930-35 have taken place, the only change is the Genoard’s immortality status. Very strong trigger warnings for prostitution, drug use, self-harm, mental illness, rape, pregnancy, miscarriage, and a variety of other things.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	La Mia Rosa Spagnola, con la Pelle Così Dolce

_It’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out._

_~ The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini_

The water looks deep and inviting for the first time since before the incident. Dallas’s fingers twine and knot together, his eyebrows furrowing to the middle of his forehead. It keeps him in something of a trance; his eyes are wide, staring blankly, pupils swelling into his iris. The air is cold and salty, emotionless, stinging at his eyes and face like hornets. Dallas tells himself that the air is the reason for the tears rolling down his cheeks.

Dallas doesn’t know why he’s gone there. He’d just started walking, walked and walked until he was staring at his own reflection in the murky water. His shoes sink into the mud, staining the black patent leather with dirty brownness. Had this been any other time, Dallas would be cursing up a storm, clawing at his hair and making his displeasure known. However, this time, he makes no sound—he only stands still as a statue and watches the tiny waves ripple on the sand in front of him.

He is so close. If he gets any closer Dallas could fall into the river. He could just let himself get swept away, flowing down with the tide to wherever it took him. He wonders if Eve would bother to look for him again. He wonders if anyone would be mildly bothered by his disappearance.

In the water, his reflection reminds him of how pitiful he really is. After the incident, Dallas could never fully recover. About a month after, he started eating less and less. His appearances outside of his room became less frequent. Most of his time, now, is spent tucked away in the closet of his bedroom, curled in on himself in the dark. It’s just too much most of the time; something inside of him has switched off. Even then, occasionally, Dallas will let his feet lead him somewhere, anywhere, and today, they led him here, of all places.

Just as soon as it had begun, Dallas feels the strong hand of his trance loosen its grasp. Gasping and bucking, much like a trapped mustang, he frees his shoes from the sticky mud and flees, leaving the riverbank far behind him. His deep prints in the mud are the only signs he leaves behind.

So long as the river flows, Dallas Genoard would never, and could never, be free.

xxx

Dallas is hurting, and Eve just can’t stand it.

She knows that the experience of repeatedly drowning for two years was enough to keep him traumatized for the rest of his life, but she had no idea what kind of pain it would bring up. How could she? She was so young, so innocent, and (she hates to admit) she doesn’t know half of the trauma he’s been through. Dallas wants to keep it that way, Eve knows, but she so desperately wants to understand, wants to find a way to help him. She wants it so bad that it hurts.

At least for now, Dallas seems to have busied himself with doing… _something_. He’s started leaving at night, comes home in the morning with cash to help tide them over. He says it’s for Eve, for all of the time and money she wasted looking for him, even when she tries to assure him that she didn’t waste a thing. She refuses the money at first, letting him pile it up on her dresser, before their bank account starts to feel the nip and pinch of recession and she finally gives in. She feels terrible.

It makes her wonder where he gets all of this money from. It’s a good, decent amount that he brings in, even if the amounts are a bit sporadic; he’ll bring in anything from 1,000 to 5,000 dollars a week, rarely less, sometimes more. That’s a hell of a lot of money, Eve knows that at least, and as far as she knows, he has no employer. She interrogates him only once to see if he’s gone to selling drugs, but he gives her a convincing “negative”, and that stops her worries. He’s changed in some aspects, at least.

Even so, the longer she dwells on it, the more Eve decides that she just can’t take it. She can’t take the look of cold deadness in his eyes, the way he flinches at loud noises and soft ones alike, the way he wraps his arms around himself like he’s always defending himself from something. This is a different Dallas, for sure, but still not the Dallas she remembers. This isn’t what he deserves.

There’s only one man who can fix this.

xxx

“I need you to fix my brother.”

The request is simple enough, but it leaves Luck Gandor rubbing wearily at his eyes and temples. He,   _fix_ Dallas Genoard? Hadn’t he tried to do that once before? He remembered it ending with Dallas cemented in a barrel. Perhaps that hadn’t quite fixed him up in the right way, according to Eve. Honestly, Luck couldn’t care _less_ if the bastard had broken from what he’d been through. In his eyes, he deserved it.

He’s about to say no, tell Eve to leave, until he looks down and into her face with a solid look of determination in her eyes. Until he sees the hurt, the fear, the pain, the silent pleas, all wrapped up into one in the worry lines around her features and on her forehead. Until he notices that her hands have curled into his suit jacket, wrung desperately there as she pleaded with him.

Luck really is too soft.

“What are you willing to give me?” He asks. Luck leans against the bookshelf in the bookstore that Eve managed to corner him in, rubs his fingers over the spine of a worn copy of Shakespeare. Eve swallows, tries to look tougher than she is.

“Anything. Please. I just need you to—to find out what’s wrong with him. You’re the only one who can do that, I think. You’re the only one who can fix this.”

“Why is that?”

She goes quiet, her lips pressed into a thin line when he asks. She doesn’t have to say it, he knows why. _Because I put him in this situation, and therefore only I can figure out a way to get him out of it._

“I’ll do it, but I’m not doing this for him. If he doesn’t cooperate, I can’t promise anything will be changed.”

“I just want you to try,” Eve whispers. Luck can tell from her voice that she’s trying not to cry. “Please, come tonight. I just want you to find out what he does, where he’s going. I want him to be _safe_ and—he overestimates himself. If anything happens to him again, I don’t know if either of us will be able to handle it.”

Luck cranes his head down to look at her again, uncurls her hands from his jacket and holds them in his for a moment, before letting them go. “I can only promise that I’ll be there, Miss Eve.”

Eve nods, running her palm across her cheek and breathing, in and out, heavily, deeply. “It will be enough for now, Luck.”


End file.
